In order to not only accommodate an increasingly technologically-savvy student population, but also make information more accessible, Fanshawe recently updated the college's website.

“Technology today changes very quickly,” explained Jeff Sage, Fanshawe's assistant manager of marketing and communications. “The preferences of our users, the students, evolve in lock-step with technology so we need to constantly need to be researching how our students use this technology so we can give them information in the ways that they're used to consuming it.”

The new website includes digital animation, video testimonials powered by YouTube, and revamped website navigation that makes finding specific information much easier and faster than before.

“Our goal is for people to be able to get information with a maximum of three-clicks,” Sage explained. “We also wanted to give the students a much more multi-media rich experience because that's the way the web is going. How our students use the web is very important to us and we want them to be able to use our site the same way they would any other popular site.”

And to this point the majority of the feedback has been good according to Sage who explained that the site had around 50,000 hits the first few days after its March 10 launch, and has been receiving accolades from not only from Fanshawe students, but colleges across Ontario and Canada.

Another big part of the design is that it allows the college to track which pages are being used the most, allowing the college to alter the site on any given day to cater to the students needs by shuffling information, and pages, onto the main page for quicker access.

“Not everybody's going to like it, and that's ok,” Sage stressed. “We need to understand that it's really the students that need to drive our website, and not the marketing department, because they're the ones accessing the information. So the more we understand what they're doing the better we can make it for them.”

And what makes the new website that much more special?

“A lot of the design elements were done by Eric Vardon and Marco DiCarlo,” Sage explained. “They're both graduates from Fanshawe's graphic design program, which just goes to show how kick-ass our programs are.”

The new Fanshawe College website can we viewed at www.fanshawec.on.ca.